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Coding Speed matter?

 
Greenhorn
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I'm not addressing the performance of an application but rather how fast a programmer deliver a solution.

I tend to see different pace of delivering solution between one programmer and another. My questions are:
-how to measure that someone is too slow in delivering a solution?
-and does speed really matter?
 
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Quality is always more important than speed.
Maintainability is also more important than speed.

If one person delivers a solution that doesn't scale, crashes frequently, and is impossible to maintain, he's actually less productive than someone who takes a few more days (or weeks, depending on project size) to deliver something that is rock stable, easy to maintain, and scales well.

Sadly many performance reviews still look only at lines of code produced per time unit (or similar broken definitions of performance) because that's easy to measure.
 
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If you work in healthcare, as I used to do, you find out that number of patients treated counts for a lot.
In some places numbers treated takes priority over whether they are very ill or not
It's not only in computing that people count what it easy to the exclusion of what matters.

CR
 
Harris Tanu
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Originally posted by Jeroen T Wenting:
Quality is always more important than speed.
Maintainability is also more important than speed.



Good programmer can release a stable solution much faster than a normal programmer.
As team leader what is the suggestion to increase programmer's efficiency instead of looking at faster delivery of the solution?
 
Jeroen T Wenting
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happy programmers work harder, well rested programmers make fewer mistakes.

Programmers are kept happy with interesting work and training, as well as an unlimited supply of softdrinks.
Programmers stay well rested by not overtaxing them, don't assume they'll work 10 hours straight per day and then switch to 16 hour days for a month at the end of the project and stay alert.

Give highly trained intelligent people mind-numbing assemblyline work with no compensation or rest and they'll not be motivated, which reflects poorly on productivity and the quality of the deliverable.

As programmers are more and more equated with shiftworkers in factories when it comes to working conditions that will more and more become apparent.
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